Austria plans to convert or demolish house Hitler was born in

Inscribed
stone outside house in which Adolf Hitler was born is pictured in
Braunau am InnThomson
Reuters

VIENNA (Reuters) - Austria plans to convert and possibly tear
down the house Hitler was born in to prevent it becoming a
pilgrimage site for neo-Nazis, the Interior Ministry said on
Monday.

Austria had already ordered the compulsory purchase of the
building in Braunau am Inn, a town on the border with Germany
where Adolf Hitler was born on April 20, 1889.

Now a committee of experts including historians, officials and
the head of Austria's main Jewish organization has recommended
that a "thorough architectural rearrangement" be carried out, and
Interior Minister Wolfgang Sobotka intends to follow their
suggestion, a spokesman for the minister said.

Austrian newspaper Die Presse, which first reported the decision,
said the house would be torn down.

"A new building will be erected," Die Presse quoted Sobotka as
saying. "The house will then be used by the community either for
charitable or official purposes."

A spokesman for Sobotka said that might involve tearing the
building down.

"A demolition is one possibility," the spokesman said, adding
that the aim was for the building to "not be recognizable". It
should also not include empty spaces, he said.

Austria, which was annexed by Hitler's Germany in 1938, has
confronted its Nazi past far less directly than its larger
neighbor, and its official line for decades was that it was that
its people were the first victims of Nazism.

Though it has long abandoned that stance, critics are likely to
see this as a case of an uncomfortable episode of history being
swept away without trace.

"We have a functioning culture of memory, for example at the
Mauthausen concentration camp," Sobotka told Die Presse when
asked if Austria was missing an opportunity to confront its Nazi
past. He also cited museums in Vienna and nearby St. Poelten.

(Reporting by Francois Murphy; Editing by Alison Williams)

Read the original article on Reuters. Copyright 2016. Follow Reuters on Twitter.